


Control

by deadlybride



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Post-Series, Secret revealed, Wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 11:08:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-series, after The Wall, after Claire reveals the secret. What could happen if one of the best soldiers on your side is leashed by someone he trusts to always make the right decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Control

Sylar’s mouth won’t stop bleeding.

“Please don’t make me,” he says. His hands are loose fists at his sides, his eyes wide and dark and so open, more honest than Peter has ever seen them.

“You don’t have to,” Peter says. The room they are huddled in is dim, and cold, but the flare of the bruises on his back is hotter than ever. He tries to make his voice steady, the anchor Sylar needs him to be. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Sylar is already shaking his head. “But if I don’t –“ He looks toward the door. “She’s going to die.”

Peter’s throat goes tight. “She could,” he says.

The blood is still seeping out, still creating that liquid streak down Sylar’s throat, staining the collar of his shirt from green to black. Peter knows Sylar can stop it, that he doesn’t have to bleed, but that’s something Sylar has started doing lately – intentionally not using his powers, letting himself be hurt, because he can. Because he has to.

Shouts are getting closer. Booted feet approaching, and with them the clank of metal, the acrid stink of guns.

Peter closes his eyes. “You could get to her in time.” He wraps his arms around his chest and tries to pretend it’s someone else doing the talking. “You could get her away. You’re strong enough.”

“Please,” Sylar says. It’s so quiet, so terribly, terribly – but Peter doesn’t listen, though his stomach roils. “Please. There has to be another way.”

“Maybe we could think of one,” Peter says, opening his eyes. Sylar’s hair has fallen across his forehead, making him look young. Absurdly so. “Maybe. If we had time. But –“

He lets his voice trail off, allows a space for an impossible plan. But there isn’t one. There is no other way, and he hates it, that he has to be the one, the one who’s going to be responsible for this because he hadn’t been fast enough, smart enough. Because he can’t go back in time and just fix it. Stop Claire from – from changing everything.

This girl they’ve never even talked to – Alexis, maybe, or Allison – Peter has trouble with the names, now, after so long – is going to be saved from death at the hands of people far worse than the one in the room with him. That isn’t what people are going to remember.

He hears a wet sniff, and realizes his eyes have closed again. So tired, always so tired, and he looks to see Sylar straightening, running a hand over his throat and mouth and chin. Just like that, the blood is gone, and he pushes his hair back away from his face to give Peter a faint, terrible smile.

“If they catch me,” he starts, the bruises slipping away to leave his skin perfectly, impossibly pale, “don’t – don’t try to come after me, all right? Just – get away. And make sure Allie’s all right.”

Allie. Peter nods, swallows. Allie, age fourteen, the girl with storms in her eyes. Of course, Sylar remembers.

“Okay,” he says.

Sylar stares at him for a second, as if waiting for something, but then his mouth firms and he nods, too, and just like that he slips out of the door and is gone.

Peter leans his side into the wall, trying to ignore the yelps of protest from his back. He hates the responsibility he’d unwittingly given himself, all those months ago. He can’t find it in himself to hate Sylar, but he does hate the power, the fear, the self-loathing that he has to blunt and carry and tell Sylar is wrong; tell him that there is no such thing as evil and the only thing that matters is the choices he makes. It was right, the right thing to do, and Sylar clings to it. But it means that now, in times like this, he’s the one who holds the reins.

Sylar will never unleash himself, ever again. Peter knows this. He’s seen the nightmares, has put his hands on those thin, shaking shoulders in the middle of the night and told him it was going to be all right. He’s made sure, made certain the monster was tamed and chained and shoved into the tightest prison Sylar’s mind could make. And because he has, it means that now people are going to be hurt, are probably going to die, because Sylar won’t let himself go – unless Peter tells him to.

Such a terrible responsibility. Peter slides down to a crouch below the boarded window as bright light flashes through the cracks, making himself small and impossible to see. His hands ache with the need to do – something, anything, but that isn’t his job anymore.

Outside, the shouts take on a different timbre. Shots ring out and without even looking up from the floor Peter knows they’ve been stopped, midair, that the men are screaming because their legs have stopped working or their arms are frozen to their sides or because electricity crackles in the air, frying their radios, making flesh burn. And in the center of it all one girl, frightened and alone, wind whistling through her hair, as her guards fall at her sides with their bones shattered and a tall man steps closer, face hard and impenetrable, and offers her a thin hand unstained by blood.


End file.
